Camera-equipped portable devices, such as CCD-camera-equipped or CMOS-camera-equipped notebook computers or portable telephones have been commercially available.
Cameras included in the camera-equipped portable devices have resolutions of just about several hundreds of thousands pixels while digital cameras have high resolutions of several-million pixels. In a digital camera shown in FIG. 19, display 2210 and operation section 2217 is provided on surface 2020A of case 2020, and camera section 2024 is provided on surface 2020B of case 2020 opposite to display 2210. Case 2020, being thick, can accommodate a camera having a certain length in its optical axis direction. Since it is required to have a small size and a small weight, a camera-equipped portable device has a thin case, and thus, the case may not accommodate a high-resolution camera section having a certain length in its optical axis direction.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-169166 discloses a portable terminal that accommodates a camera section having a certain length in its optical axis direction. This portable terminal includes a main body and a flip for opening and closing the main body, and accommodates a lens for image-capturing in the direction of a rotation axis of the flip. This rotation axis is parallel to a display screen, such as a liquid crystal display, that is generally provided on a flat portion of the main body or the flip, and thus, a user cannot capture an image of an object while looking at the image on the display screen. In order to capture the image of the object while looking at it on the display screen of this portable terminal, the flip can rotate in a direction perpendicular to the rotation axis, and the flip necessarily rotates perpendicularly to the optical axis direction of the camera section.